
SABBATH SCHOOL LESSON QUARTERLY
27
light, and light for darkness (La. 5: 20) ,•' false prophets will
do great signs and wonderg, to deceive, if possible, the elect
of God (Mark 13: 22) ; Satan himself will appear as an angel
of light, and his ministers as ministers of righteousness (2
Cor. 11: 14, 15) ; persecution will break forth upon those who
honor God's law in the gospel of Christ (Rev. 12: 17; 13: 11-
17) ; Satan will work with all power and signs and lying
wonders (2 Thess. 2: 9-12) ; in short, every delusion of the
past, every device of the devil adapted for the present, a
very flood of iniquity and persecution, will roll in upon the
world and the people of God in these days of peril, culminat-
ing in the hour of temptation such as the world has never
before seen (Rev. 3: 10). These are the perils.
2.
On the other hand, the Lord Jesus Christ, who con-
quered Satan, has promised, "Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world." He has given His precious truth
to meet all the wiles of the adversary (2 Thess. 2: 10-12) ;
He has promised that when the enemy shall come in like a flood,
the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him
(Isa. 59: 19) ; God will keep His people in the hour of temp-
tation which is coming on all the world to try those who dwell
on the earth (Rev. 3: 10).
3.
"There is a fellowship of Christ's sufferings in re-
lation to pain. The pains of life, inward and outward, are
as varied as the bodies and souls on which they fasten. Our
sensibilities to pain are very various: one thing hurts one
person, and another another; that which is agony to me my
neighbor scarcely feels. This is true of the roughnesses of
life, and it is true of the calumnies of life, and it is true of
the disappointments of life; it is true of those trials which
come to us through the affections, and it is true of those
trials which come to us through the ambitions of our nature.
Thus much we may say with certainty: that no man, and
therefore no Christian, passes through life untouched by
distress. The cause may vary, and the kind may vary, and
the degree may vary, all but infinitely ; still the fact is there,
the thing is there; the experience must be gained, as alone it
can be gained, through suffering; and oftentimes the even
tenor of an untroubled life, in its brightest and serenest
day, is but the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below. . . .
"There is a fellowship of ,Christ's sufferings in relation to
sin. As He resisted unto blood, striving against sin, so must
we. It is a life-and-death battle for each one of us. We shall
never have done with it for long together while life lasts.
Sometimes by craft and sometimes by assault, sometimes by
ambush, sometimes by feigned flight, sometimes with parade
of arms and trumpets, as though secure of intimidation and
of triumph, the old enemy attacks again, the old sin rises